"The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will." - Gaping Void

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Were I Bin Laden I could not have dreamt that the spirit of 9/11 would be so vigorous five years on. I have western leaders still parroting my motto that “9/11 alters everything” and “the rules of the game are changed”. I have the Taliban resurgent, financed by Europe’s voracious demand for oil and opium. I have the Pentagon and Scotland Yard paying me the compliment of a “long war” of indefinite duration. My potency is said to require more defence spending than was needed to contain the might of the Soviet Union.

1 comment:

I've been mulling over your observation "sarcasim doesn't scale" http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?SarcasmDoesntScale (I really need to learn how to put live links in comments here)

The current violence seems pedicated on the premise "The only thing those Arabs will respect is power" or perhaps some uglier version of the same idea. The power referred is the "power over."

This article suggests to me that if the war is also a war of terrible ideas than Bin Laden is winning.

Surely there is a war of ideas and Rumsfeld has spent 1.4 billion on PR, at least that he'll admit to and still the ideas aren't going his way.

In this war of ideas I wonder if there's something similar to your observation about sarcasim on the Internet. Your suggestion that when people feel strongly about ideas even when they begin by trolling and flaming given time reason will out. How optimistic!

Recently I've been thinking about Black History on the occasion of Black History Month. We Americans, at least this American, don't dwell too much about our past. In any event the non-violent tactics of the Civil Rights movement are really interesting. "New weapons" James Farmer clled them.

I'm not so sure ideas are just in the realm of reason--much of them felt in the gut. But in the face of violence and terror, under the spell of those who beleive the only thing we'll respect is power over us, resistance means empowerment.

Fela Kuti said: "Music is the weapon of the future."

The tools of soul power aren't unknown to us. Let's use them! Oh, rather, thanks Phil for weilding them so deftly.